Re: Bottom Posting

Andy Anderson <aanderson(at)amherst(dot)edu> writes:
>> On May 27, 2008, at 7:41 PM, Gregory Williamson wrote:
>> In-line comments are more readable, especially for longish emails.

> But if you do bottom-post, please *do* edit the earlier content down
> to just the context of your comments. Otherwise readers can end up
> paging through lots of stuff before they get to the new bits. Archives
> are available for reference if necessary.

Indeed. Another little tip that some folk seem not to have figured out:
leave some white space between what you write and what you quote. The
posts that I hate even worse than top-posting are the ones where the
poster quotes the entire thread and inserts a line or two of comment
that isn't visibly separate from what's around it, like this:

> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
comment added here
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah
> blah blah blah

This is a truly outstanding way of ensuring that no one will read
what you wrote.

Bottom line: have some respect for your readers. Make it easy to
distinguish what you wrote from the preceding material, and remember
that the only reason you are quoting anything at all is to provide some
context for what you are saying. We don't need to re-read the entire
darn thread.

regards, tom lane